Causes of Social Anxiety Disorder

Typical causes of social anxiety disorder are: insufficient mother’s care in early childhood, emotional trauma in childhood, teenage period or in adulthood, an embarrassing social event, etc.

First five years of individual’s live are very important for its later psychological development. This is because a newborn and a small child are helpless without parents’ care and if that care is not good a child is very scared and feels extremely insecure and afraid for its survival.

Some examples of insufficient mother’s care in early childhood are:

Anxious and mother that is insecure in her parental role

Mother that is not empathetic enough

Mother that doesn’t take care of her child

Mother that doesn’t feed her child on time or enough

Abusive mother

First social contact that a newborn has, is with its mother. First social relationship that a newborn develops is again with its mother. This is why this symbiotic relationship is the foundation of all other relationships in person’s life. In other wards the quality of the relationship between mother and child is of great importance for child’s entire social life.

First year of an individual’s life is of great importance for his or her later social life because it is during this period that an individual develops an emotional attachment with his or her mother. The way that a newborn develops an emotional relationship with its mother can determine many things such as social behavior of an individual.

It is safe to say that one of the main causes of social anxiety disorder is the inappropriate and insufficient mother’s care during early childhood. However there are other possible causes of social anxiety disorder that that can also be very harmful to an individual’s mental hygiene. One of them is emotional
traumas in childhood, adolescence period or even adulthood.

Emotional trauma can be cause of entire spectrum of physical and mental disorders and social anxiety disorder is no exception to this rule. A child that is mentally or physically abused always develops certain defense mechanisms in order to survive. Without defense mechanisms nobody would be able to adapt and by that to survive.

Unfortunately for many abused children they develop, what is called, insufficient or simply bad defense mechanisms which cause them even more suffering, in life. One example of a bad defense mechanism is unconscious avoidance of others so that they cannot hurt us. This is what a person really does when he or she develops social phobia.

They can’t approach other people and socialize with them because they are afraid of them. They want to socialize, they feel lonely and miserable and they have no idea what causes their fear of other people. This is a true tragedy however it can have happy end. In fact there are many happy ends when these people are treated.

Aside from insufficient mother’s care and emotional traumas there are other possible causes of social anxiety disorder which are more obvious and easier to treat such as embarrassing social events.

One event can mark one’s life, it can make it easy, hard, difficult, beautiful, unbearable etc. One event can do a lot or nothing depending on its emotional importance to an individual. Just the same one embarrassing social event can cause social phobia even though that doesn’t happen often.

Maybe it is more accurate to say that an embarrassing social event can trigger social phobia rather than cause it. In any ways it deserves full attention if a person develops a social anxiety disorder after such an event.

An important thing to know is that no matter what the causes of social anxiety disorder are it can and it is treated very successfully.